


Dear Dad

by greerwatson



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Bobbing for apples, Crunchy Leaves, Fire, Gen, Halloween, Halloween Candy, Halloween Costumes, Halloween: Spooky Music, Jack-o'-lanterns, Party, Pumpkins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 04:38:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16401461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerwatson/pseuds/greerwatson
Summary: Halloween at M.A.S.H. 4077.





	Dear Dad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blueteak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueteak/gifts).



So how’s it going in Crabapple Cove?  Piles of leaves for the kids to jump in?  I remember....

Yeah, and I remember you yelling that you'd “just raked them dammit”; and I'd wait till you'd done a new pile and scatter that ... again ... and then you'd laugh.  And Mom would bring out mugs of cider and oatmeal cookies; and afterwards you'd hand me a rake and tell me games were over and time to help.

Damn, I bet the trees are still looking gorgeous in Maine—well, that’s if you haven’t had a storm to blow them all down.  Which reminds me, if there is a hurricane, don’t try to board up the windows yourself.  Get someone to help, even if you have to pay them.  I don’t want you putting your back out again.  Anyway, it’s fall here in Korea, too.  No sugar maples, but not bad.  Makes me homesick.  _-er_.  Homesick- _er_.  We’re all of us homesick.  It’s kind of a permanent condition round here.

Enough of that.  Let me tell you what’s been going on round M.A.S.H. 4077.

There are no trees right here in camp, but the leaves get blown in anyway.  They get trodden into moosh and tracked in everywhere.  ’Course the orderlies sweep ’em out of post-op.  Still, it’s made the Swamp kind of a mess—which it is anyway, mind you—and it drives Charles wild.  He’s such a neat freak.  Meanwhile, nights are getting longer … and colder.  Whistling wind outside the tent, and all that.  We’ve been firing up the stove and thinking of long johns.  It’ll be winter soon enough, and—oh! with the mail what it is, could you maybe send me a pair so I get them sometime before Christmas?

Anyway, the Koreans had their harvest festival a few weeks back, and it gave Colonel Potter an idea.  He’s always after ways to boost morale.  He decided we should celebrate Halloween with a party in the Officers’ Club and a prize for the best costume.  A weekend pass to Tokyo!  You can imagine how everyone reacted:  wild enthusiasm followed by “Oh God, what shall I wear.”  Because, let’s face it, a M.A.S.H. unit isn’t big on places to shop.  It’s more a matter of what you can contrive.  So the most popular guy in camp is Radar O’Reilly.  I’ve mentioned him before, our company clerk.  Great little guy, can wangle just about anything if you can figure out a trade.  I found Charles in there one day.  Dunno what he wanted Radar to get for him; but he had a _majorly_ pained look on his face.  Then he slid his watch off and handed it over, saying, “See if they’ll trade for this.”

Anyway, do you remember me telling you about those gorilla suits that me and Trapper had?  I wanted to order one for the costume party; and Radar said, “Why don’t you just wear the old one?”  I tell you, the number of times we’ve bugged out since then, it never occurred to me that the damn thing could still be around.  I mean, we cart all this _stuff_ —it’s a wonder how we put the Mobile in M.A.S.H., you know?  And sure enough, there it was in a box in the supply tent.  So that was _me_ set.

Now, anything in the costume line, Klinger’s your man.  BJ decided he’d go as a pirate.  He used about a gallon of mercurochrome painting stripes on one of his undershirts.  But he wanted a sort of sash thing around his waist.  Dunno what Klinger charged; but Beej got a long scarf from him and added an eyepatch.  _Voila!_   Pirate!

Baker borrowed a floor-length pink satin number.  Kellye somehow sweet-talked Klinger into letting her wear his bridal gown, veil and all.  (I guess they must be about the same size round; so she fitted it okay that way. But he’s a good foot taller.)  As for Margaret Houlihan … she got him to lend her his fanciest hat—I think I described it to you once:  about a foot high with more fruit on it than a Christmas cake—and squeezed herself into a low-cut, flowery, skinny number that WOWSA!!!

(I’m fanning myself here.)

Charles, of course, went around all week with his nose in the air.  Always thinks he’s too good to get involved in the same things as the rest of us.  A few days before the 31st he got a package from home.  Well, so did a lot of us—bits and pieces of costuming, and bags of candy kisses.  But Charles wouldn’t open his parcel until we’d gone on duty and then hid whatever it was in his footlocker.  We tried to open it when he was out, and he’d put a padlock on.  Dunno what he did with the key:  we couldn’t find it anywhere.

A lot of contrivance went into decorating the Officers’ Club for the party.  Bandages into streamers, sheets into ghosts, that sort of thing.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have any apples for bobbing.  Fresh produce is a sometime thing in these parts. Food mostly comes in cans; and the cooks do their worst with it. So Radar swapped for a case of Ivory soap, shipped straight from Tokyo. He said he figured it would work just as well, since it floats. Well, the bobbing part he was right; but you can imagine how much fun it was trying to bite into a bar of soap. So he didn’t get a lot of takers. On the other hand the suds looked great.

Now you'll find this hard to believe, but even Radar couldn’t find us a pumpkin.  Nary a one to be found in the whole of the U.S. Army in Korea, not for love nor money—and believe me, he tried.  So we used as many copies of _Stars and Stripes_ as we could lay our hands on, turned them into papier-mâché, and made a hu-u-u-u-uge pumpkin shape out of it, nice and round.  Cut a good Jack o’ Lantern face into it, and painted it orange.  _There_ Radar came up trumps.  Got us a gallon of the stuff.

So, what with one thing and another, the Officers’ Club looked really Halloweeny.  Oh, and there was a big bowl of goodies on the bar!  You came up for a drink, you just dipped in for a nibble.  Everyone contributed what they had—well, except Charles, of course.  _You_ sent me a giant bag of candy corn, remember?  That bulked things up a bit.  The colonel put in two tubs of mixed shelled nuts; Margaret had a bag of marshmallows; Radar’s Mom sent him some licorish.  That sort of thing.

Beej took just _one_ piece out of Peg’s latest parcel of fudge, and put the rest in the bowl.

So there was dancing and drinking, and drinking and dancing.  Klinger had the bar, flipping caps off bottles of beer and mixing cocktails.  It got so busy he just tipped a bottle of gin into a jug for easy pouring.  Even Radar got into the swing of things and had a beer or two instead of his usual Grape Nehi.  Then he got up the nerve to ask Nurse Baker to dance.  She’d taken that satin dress she borrowed from Klinger and added wings.  I’m not sure if she was a fairy or an angel; but she damn near put Radar’s eye out with them.  After that he retreated to a corner with Igor, and they put their heads together and swapped scuttlebutt.  (I can certainly believe that Margaret spent her last leave in a hotel with General Barker; and Colonel Flagg could have been seen at Rosie’s bar; but no way did Charles bribe the cooks to let him use the stove.)

Well, talking about Charles (though why on earth I’m talking about Charles!), he was absolutely the last person to arrive at the party, and swanned in wearing a monkey suit.  And, when I say “monkey suit”, I do _not_ mean the mate to my gorilla.  Colonel Potter looked him up and down, and asked what he’d come as.  So Radar put in, “Bruce Wayne?”  Father Mulcahy looked round from the piano and suggested “Ambassador?”  And Beej promptly said, “Ambassador to Lower Slobovia!”

"Emphasis on ‘ _Slob_ ovia’,” I put in.  Not that Charles is a slob, mind you.  Quite the opposite. Ostentatiously so.  (Obnoxiously so!)

But I’ll give Charles this, he just stuck his nose in the air and said, “No, I’m the pianist.”  And then he actually _sat down at the piano_ , God bless ’im.  Father Mulcahy got up for him, whispering something in his ear about the happy kids at the orphanage.  And Charles set to hammering out some of his highbrow music that actually sounded kind of spooky and familiar (but I don’t know its name).

Well, you’re probably dying to know who won the two-day pass.  No, it wasn’t me.  Nor was it BJ (and it certainly wasn’t Charles).  It was Nurse Kellye, who made a lovely bride in Klinger’s dress.  She had to shorten the skirt, of course; but she promised Klinger she wouldn’t cut it, so she tacked it up.  Later, after Potter gave her the prize, someone—who shall be nameless (okay, okay, it was me)—stepped on the hem while dancing (accidentally- _not_ -on-purpose, I assure you); and she spent the rest of the party with half of it swept up over one arm and Klinger glaring at her over the bar.

When the party really got going, Rizzo decided that Jack o’ Lanterns always have candles inside to glow their faces.  We had a bunch for emergencies; so he grabbed a few, stuck ’em in, and used a lighter on ’em.  Well, being only papier-mâché, the whole pumpkin caught. There was mad panic, as you might expect; and Charles leapt into action and tossed a jug of water over it. Except that it was the gin that Klinger had on the bar; so the flames went up like a bonfire.

No, the Officer’s Club didn’t burn.  It wasn’t that big a fire.  After the first fury, it sort of died down.  In the end, we roasted Margaret’s marshmallows.

So that was Halloween.  Next up is Thanksgiving, for which it is rumored we’ll be having turkey.  Well, that’s what Hot Lips says Nurse Able says Radar says Igor says the Cook says. 

Real turkey, oven roasted.  I’ll believe it when I eat it.


End file.
